Theresa Thompson looks ahead to the exhibitions lined up for art lovers at the Ashmolean this year

After another very positive year at the Ashmolean in Oxford — a year that saw more than 80,000 visitors to its Cézanne exhibition, making it the most successful show in its history — and another 43,000, including many families, to last summer’s Tutankhamun — the museum has turned towards the drawing board for its 2015 special exhibitions programme.

“2015 will draw on arguably the museum’s greatest strength: the extraordinary art in its prints and drawings collection,” said new director Alexander Sturgis, speaking at a press briefing in London.

From Great British Drawings, highlighting some of the museum’s treasures not normally on show, to an exhibition of caricatures celebrating James Gillray “the greatest of all political satirists of the 18th century,” to the autumn’s ground-breaking exhib-ition of Venetian drawings from the Uffizi, Florence, the Ashmolean, and Christ Church, Oxford, it promises to be a bonanza year for art lovers in Oxford.

The year starts fabulously with the continuing exhibition William Blake: Apprentice and Master (until March 1). If you haven’t yet seen it, I urge you to go, for not only does it explore how Blake’s career developed and how one of Britain’s most original artists — the archetypical visionary artist — inspired later generations of artists, but also includes a reconstruction of Blake’s printmaking studio and some of his well-loved illuminated books, including The Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Also, from January 16–31, there’s a two-week Inspired by Blake Festival to look forward to, run in partnership with Blackwell’s of Oxford, including talks, music, theatre, and community events.

From one visionary to another: Ed Paschke: Visionary from Chicago, 1970–2004, curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal. Paschke is one of Chicago’s most significant artists — part of a group known as the Chicago Imagists who emerged in the 1960s — and a selection of his colourful provocative paintings is shown free in the third of the Ashmolean’s series of exhibitions of post-war and contemporary art in coll-aboration with the Hall Art Foundation (USA). It runs from January 17-July 5.

Two eye-catching exhibitions open in March, both on the 26th. For Love Bites: Caricatures by James Gillray (until June 21), the Ashmolean has teamed up with New College to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of the British caricaturist. More than 60 works will be loaned from the Oxford college’s outstanding collection — which holds over two-thirds of the 1100 known Gillray engravings. Although Gillray is most known for his derisive satires, the display will show him in another light, taking on themes of love, marriage, friendships, and alliances in the Georgian era.

For Great British Drawings (until August 31) the Ashmolean delves into its own world-class collection of works on paper to offer more than 100 drawings by some of this country’s greatest artists, to trace the history of drawing in Britain. Many drawings will be seen for the first time in public. Highlights include Samuel Cooper’s portrait of Thomas Alcock (c.1650), thought one of the most sensitive drawings of a face ever made; landscapes by ‘golden age’ British watercolourists, Cozens, Turner, Girtin among them; Pre-Raphaelite works; and bringing things more up to date, John Piper, Paul Nash, and Tom Phillips.

Oxford Mail:
Sensitive: Samuel Cooper’s portrait of Thomas Alcock (c.1650)

To follow such a marvellous show is a tough call. But then along comes the highly anticipated autumn exhibition, Drawing in Venice: Titian to Canaletto, which, in curator Dr Catherine Whistler’s words, is “essentially about the beauty and eloquence of Venetian art”.

The starting point of this collaborat-ion between the Uffizi and Ashmolean is the age of Titian, Whistler explains, when graphic art took on a very high profile. Based on new research, the exhibition will feature 100 drawings, including work by Titian, Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Canaletto, and Guardi.

“People simply won’t have seen the Uffizi drawings before,” said Whistler. “They may have seen one or two in exhibitions in say, Paris or Italy, but not them together. We’re looking at the whole panorama of Venetian drawing.” Opening in Oxford on October 15 until January 10, 2016, the exhibition then tours to Florence. Finally, of the small free displays that are always worth looking out for at the Ashmolean, Hiroshige’s Japan continues until February 15.

Visit ashmolean.org